Flossing is essential to proper daily oral hygiene, as it functions to effectively remove bacterial plaque between teeth and at the gum line—areas generally inaccessible through conventional brushing techniques. Indeed, regular flossing is often the first defense to the prevention or onset of periodontal disease and/or gingivitis. Although a multitude of flossing instruments are currently available to facilitate such regular dental practice, dental floss or flossing thread remains the most convenient and popular choice amongst the general populace, and often the most highly-recommended by dental practitioners.
Unfortunately, individuals with orthodontically-treated teeth and, in particular, those individuals with braces, experience significant difficulties in maneuvering dental floss between the brace structures to access the teeth and gum line structures. Specifically, with conventional fixed brace systems spanning the upper and/or lower rows of teeth, the front surface of each tooth comprises a bracket cemented or otherwise affixed thereto, wherein a wire (“archwire”) extends between and through each bracket. As such, in the fixed brace configuration, the wire interrupts or prevents full passage of the dental floss between each tooth; thus, hindering effective inter-dental flossing.
In an attempt to circumvent the structural obstacles imposed by such fixed brace assemblies, many brace-adorned individuals will often utilize inter-proximal brushes and/or oral irrigators (i.e., water picks) to get underneath or past the wire. However, inter-proximal brushes do not effectively access the gum line, and oral irrigators, usually utilized to remove inter-dental food particles, fail to provide the requisite “mechanical” interface needed to frictionally remove plaque deposits.
As an alternative to the foregoing dental products, many brace wearers utilize a floss threader to wedge or push dental floss underneath the wire. Unfortunately, the floss threader must be utilized to feed the dental floss between each arch or pass of the wire extending between each bracket of each tooth to access each inter-dental space; thus, significantly increasing overall flossing time. Indeed, with such floss threaders, the user must often utilize his/her thumb and index finger in an attempt to grab or pinch the floss fed underneath the wire, and then, after laying the floss threader down, coil the strand of dental floss around his/her “flossing fingers”, and resume flossing—a series of steps that must be repeated for each inter-dental space of each tooth within the upper and lower brace-fitted rows of teeth.
Therefore, it is readily apparent that there is a need for an orthodontic flossing implement and method of use thereof, wherein the present invention facilitates the effective and expeditious flossing between brace-fitted teeth, and along the gum line, by enabling the individual to simply insert the present pre-threaded flossing implement underneath each arch of the wire, floss between an inter-dental space, and subsequently retract the flossing implement, whilst maintaining the floss with the flossing implement; thus, enabling the user to systematically move between each arch of the wire and floss the inter-dental space proximate thereto, without having to re-thread floss between each arch or pass of the wire.